As the ERP (Enterprise resource planning) methodology has become more popular, software applications have emerged to help business managers implement ERP in business activities such as inventory control, order tracking, customer service, finance and human resources, etc.
For example, parcel shipping has grown to become an important mode of transportation and the industry continues to grow as enterprises and other shippers (e.g., enterprise customers) seek an increasing range of services from carriers (e.g., suppliers) to fulfill market requirements. By way of example, enterprises seek carriers that are able to integrate their transportation planning and execution processes, to implement business rules easily, to manage their business processes in exception mode(s), to track their shipping execution, and to complete the loop with an easy financial settlement. In addition, carriers are attempting to distinguish themselves by offering a wide variety of value added services, such as track & trace features and address validation.
There are many carriers providing parcel shipping services including, but is not limited to, ocean shipping and shipping by rail, etc. In order to improve efficiency and convenience to customers, most carriers provide application program interfaces (APIs) or web services so that ERP companies may integrate those services into their solutions. Some common carrier APIs or services mostly include rate and service selection (RSS), pick, pack, manifest and track, etc. For example, using an RSS service, customer may obtain a list of available products after providing parcel weight or ship-from and ship-to information, then the customer chooses one according to a specific requirement. For most carriers, the interfaces for RSS are different, so the major work of integrating a carrier's services into an ERP system is to implement the interface mapping (or message mapping) between the ERP system and the carrier's backend system.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a typical solution of integrating an ERP system and a backend system of a carrier. Referring to FIG. 1, the interface mapping, which transforms a carrier's private interface into the ERP company's private interface, is located in the ERP system. That is to say, the ERP company will do the mapping. There is tight coupling between a carrier's backend system and an ERP system.
As a result, all interface mapping will be done by the ERP company, so it is impractical for the ERP company to integrate a large quantity of carriers because interface mapping is a heavy workload. Even if the ERP company only integrates several major carrier backend systems, the workloads are still relatively large. In addition, if one carrier changes its interface, the existing ERP system will not function.
Such an interface change would produce a serious problem if the ERP system has already released to its customers. The ERP company would need to update the interface mapping between the ERP's private interface and the carrier's new interface, and then publish the update as a patch to all customers. The ERP company would then notify each customer individually to install the new patch. If the ERP company has many customers, this would prove to be a time consuming task. Further, if the ERP company integrates hundreds of carrier backend systems into the ERP system, the ERP company would need to update the ERP system more often, even if one carrier only updates its interface on occasion. Customers would then need to install ERP system patches more frequently.